/lit/ - Literature

>>19993515
My guess is because they heavily focus on their ideas and the hard sciences behind them over evoking beautiful images in your mind. That’s why some of their writing can be a bit dry.

>>19993515
sci fi is more about the ideas than the writing imo
>>19993529
this

>>19993515
Autism
Rejection by normies means they have no idea how people communicate

>>19993529
This plus many of them were atheists, so they had no souls.

Tried to read "Ubik" a while back and I was appalled by how poorly the characters are written (even their names are ridiculous: Joe Chip, Stanton Mick, Ray Hollis...). They were essentially your typical old-school American dude-bros in space with zero psychological depth.

>>19993515
Other than Wolfe, who are so great Sci-fi writers? Kubrick said Clarke was a poet but I haven't read him so Idk

>>19993535
I think effective communication is overrated. so many people have coombrain.

>>19993671
yeah, Clarke and Asimov are the best

>>19993515
Uhh because sci fi is for gay nerds? giga chad writers like Nabokov laughed at the entire genre.

>>19993671
H.G Wells
Adolfo Bioy Cesares (im probably spelling his name wrong)
Carl Kapek

>>19993671
I hard-resisted liking them, but Larry Niven and John Brunner stand out. Sturgeon isn't too bad, and van Vogt had some intense capability for putting himself in animal and other character brains.

To be a great writer you need to be a great reader you need to read the classics. Can you imagine someone reading Shakespeare and then being inspired to write about flying saucers and laser beams?

>>19993671
Samuel delaney philip k dick. Ra lafferty cordwainer smith AKA CIA psychological warfare officer paul linerbarger, its not a good writers or bad ones but of an inherent interest that transcends that dichotomy. Golden or silver age scifi is to the senescent american empire what mayakovsky and the avant gardes of the 20s were to high stalinism or the khruschev years. One can only make sense of present day american culture by getting inside the mind of a robert heinlein a us navy officer gung ho militarist libertarian poly free love advocate good friend to l ron hubbard. Asimov and much of the star trek writers were eastern european jewish immigrants more idealistic than the natives about science and liberal ideals . but then there is this weird margin of sexual deviants spooks, acid casualties the people who for better of worse created the modern world. Japanese otaku are also a calque of golden age sci fi fandom.

>>19994397
"CHAPTER ONE
TREVITHRA

ONCE UPON A TIME—

But what time? Before or after the last events recorded in memory?

Always the same questions recurred in the same order and were answered in the same order. For this plaything of chance, that was almost the only stable fact of existence.

First: Who am I? (Or what. It amounted to exactly the same thing, and the answer never changed.)

Then: Where am I? (Subjective millennia of stored data supplied at least that much information.)

Finally: When am I?

And there was only ever one way to find that out…


LIKE THE SHADOW OF A SLOWLY CLOSING DOOR, NIGHT FELL over Clayre, Trevithra’s spaceport city by the Althark Sea. There was no twilight to speak of, for it lay athwart the equator. From the temples, shrines, parks, and palaces on Mam-chunk Hill to the artisans’ shacks by the waterfront, and farther yet, by way of the rickety platforms where dwelt combers and scavengers, to the frail smacks and yawls that served as homes for fisherfolk—rising now and snatching a scanty meal before their night’s work—people glanced up by reflex, expecting to see reassuring green-metallic flashes, brilliant as the sheen on a waterwaif. They betokened an artificial aurora that killed spores drifting down from space.
It had, however, been switched off.
The citizens, accordingly, had a rare opportunity to glimpse the stellar glory beyond their sky, for the line of sight thus opened up happened to lie directly along the main axis of the Arm of Stars and back toward the parent galaxy. However, most were too nervous to enjoy the sight. There had been rumors for the past few days, though no hard news, and here was their confirmation.
Another starship was about to land. And who ever knew what one of those might bring?"

It's florid, but it's fucking interesting. Hard to think he didn't read the classics.

>>19994397
I read Shakespeare and was inspired to write fantasy, to be desu with you sempai. Especially with the witches in Macbeth and the ghost in Hamlet. Probably the former more than the latter. I don't think science fiction can reach those depths, it's mostly "hey what if X invention?" The science fiction that steps beyond that, really, is fantasy where the monsters are labelled aliens. Dune is fantasy, not sci-fi, for example.

>>19994375
Sturgeon is the gold standard prose-wise. Vonnegut also deserves a mention as one of the few sci fi writers who managed to be considered literary (Huxley and Orwell I suppose did the same, but I don't find their prose that impressive)

>>19994427
>"hey what if X invention?"
>Dune is fantasy, not sci-fi, for example.
Actshually, there's a number of good reasons SF was pivoted to 'speculative fiction', rather than science, quite some time ago.

>>19994397
>Can you imagine someone reading Shakespeare and then being inspired to write about flying saucers and laser beams?
The guy who wrote The Tempest. The guy who wrote about ghosts, fairies, a statue coming to life, and witches. Crazy thought.

>>19994435
>speculative fiction
I forgot that exact term, but that's what I meant by calling it fantasy. The golden age SF writers (Clarke, Asimov, etc) couldn't write and modern writers can't write, genre or not. I wish I had the image saved that compared the pulps to the golden age and high fantasy.

I'm sure a lot of you disagree, but I've always thought pretty highly of Harlan Ellison. Though I guess he is mostly lumped into the "speculative" category.

Ah bloo bloo

>>19994466
>I've always thought pretty highly of one of the most highly-thought of writers in the entire genre
Who's gonna disagree?

>>19993515
Nerds are bad at art

>>19994463
>modern writers can't write, genre or not
It's hard to make much of a case, here, since I haven't read most modern SF, but Stephenson and KSRobinson have been doing pretty good.
There was always some suspension of disbelief necessary for SF to exist, since it was always about science that didn't really exist (oh god, those guys who tried using "hypnotic geometry" for brainwashing shapes, way back in the golden age). There's no clear boundaries between fantasy and SF other than setting tropes, but that's not really a bad thing, to me. If space is involved, there's your SF. If dragons show up, it's probably fantasy. Everything else doesn't really bother me, much.

Throwing up another name, Zelazny's got decent stuff in both genres.

Read John M. Ford's stuff

>>19994397
This is why Wolfe's writing is actually good. Wolfe went on record saying that he liked to read good literature. Chesterton and Borges are two particular influences on Wolfe that stand out, and he mentioned both of them. He loved Kipling, too, and while I'm not sure you can call Kipling "great" literature, he's no slouch.

>>19993515
"Science fiction" is a communist genre invented by communists to espouse communism, and if you've ever cracked open Marx you'd know that communism is chracterized by boring ass writing. Rand and Heinlein hardly had to write a limerick apiece to be transcendent masters of the genre.

>>19993894
Asimov’s prose is horrible

>>19994503
Idk, I've seen people on /lit/ shit on him before

At least science fiction writers have some degree of creativity when it comes to worldbuilding.

Oh, except for those people who write Star Wars and Star Trek novels. Not only are they shit writers, but they are also not even creative enough to build a universe for their novel(s). How the fuck do these people expect to write a decent novel when they have to abide by the rules of the universe they are stealing?

>>19994503
Outside of IHNMAIMS and that episode of Star Trek, what has he done?

>>19993515
high concept over prose

>>19994582
His editor introductions to the stories in Dangerous Visions were legitimately good, if too long in some instances. Otherwise, I've only read a variety of his short stories, and they were okay.
>>19994567
Fuck 'em, but maybe they're on to something. Doesn't pay to deify anybody.

>>19994582
A Boy and His Dog is probably his next most popular contribution, I've only seen the movie desu. But he wrote a lot of short stories. I thought all of the ones in Angry Candy were great.

>>19993515
What about Wolfe tho?
I bypassed your inb4 by sending this post upon the seas of space and time from a previous oscillation of Briah, so suck it faggot

>>19994538
He's also influenced by Faulkner, Nabakov, Proust, Dickens, Dante, Lovecraft, Forster, Poe, etc.
https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/wolfe46interview.htm

>>19993671

Iain M. Banks' Culture Series. Inversions & Excession, Use of Weapons, Player of Games, truly great stuff.

>>19993570
>They were essentially your typical old-school American dude-bros in space with zero psychological depth.
Essentially 99% of america's population.

>>19993671
Disch, Dick, and Delaney.

>>19993558
Yeah, many genre writers who are Atheists or "Agnostic" (atheists) tend to be write dry plots with one-dimensional characters and dull prose.
Wolfe and Tolkien were Catholic, Lewis was protestant, I think PKD (who was leagues ahead of the 'big three') was a Gnostic or into new age stuff, Eddison and Macdonald were religious, etc.
Not a correlation, but strange nonetheless.

>>19993534
>sci fi is more about the ideas than the writing imo
This, and that's why it's for teenagers and younger. I might have liked Dune had I read it back when I was 13. It's fucking insufferable trash now, though.

>>19993671
Clarke is a fucking idiot and writes like a B tier movie

>>19993671
2001 has very cool prose.

>>19994538
>>19994912
Can someone explain how we went from Poe and Lovecraft to Stephen King? H.G. Wells and Verne to Asimov? Tolkien and Lewis to Neil Gaiman? What the fuck happened to quality? Is television to blame?

>>19996622

You say Bieber I say Metallica, you say Ariana Grande, I say The Beatles. You say Takashi69 I say Linkin Park.

Like and share if you were born in the wrong generation.

>>19996793
>Everything is subjective bro!
No.
>Ariana Grande, I say The Beatles
What a retarded comparison.
>Wrong generation
Asimov died before my birth

Why do so many Science Fiction writers with degrees in English pretend to be scientists? Kim Stanley Robinson comes to mind.

>>19997003

I feel like you missed the point, none of them are good comparisons really. You find similar comments all over the internet where teens act like modern music is terrible, and they’re special for liking classic rock or pop.

There’s a survivor bias though, Pink Floyd are still remembered today because they were really good, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Syd Barrets solo stuff isn’t celebrated because it was just okay. Its easy to look at all the Music that survived and say music was much better in the past but its just perspective, we only cultrally remember the good stuff.

Its the same for books, we still talk about Melville and Conrad but no one gives a shit about Marryat anymore, his writing just didn’t stand the test of time. We didn’t go from Lewis to Gaiman. In 100 years people will only be discussing one of them.

>>19996622
>Is television to blame?
Partly. Most writers nowadays grew up being bombarded with TV and mass media on a daily basis. They can't help but to think, imagine and write with those archetipes in mind. They write following the patterns and mannerisms of american sitcoms and capeshit movies, making their books as easy as possible to be translated to the visual medium

Idk, but the Stargate from SG-1 is actually a documentary. All that shit actually happened and the military is hiding warp travel from us for some reason.

>>19993515
The genre grew out of pulp magazines so the focus was on cool ideas and basic writing mechanics (plot, pacing, etc).

>>19997824
Why are the stories in pulp magazines so cool while the novels are borderline autistic?

>>19997994
Probably because it's easy to be pretentious when it comes to sci-fi and constraints on length hold the author back while inviting the reader to bring more to the table?

>>19993671
the sf new wave is what you're looking for: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Wave_science_fiction

>>19997003
>No
nta but do you actually have an argument for this other than because you want it to be true? because from what i can tell objectivity in aesthetics is basically predicated on kant's formalism, and formalism has become increasingly passe since it resulted in art that 95% of people consider boring as hell

>>19994397
>Can you imagine someone reading Shakespeare and then being inspired to write about flying saucers and laser beams?
actually yes

>>19993671
I know im pushing whats considered sci-fi but Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is worth a read

>>19993570
That's kind of the point

>>19994621
*ding ding ding*
This anon got it

>>19999012
Very few writers could create a mental image with so few words better than Bradbury. He was the opposite of pretentious and wordy.

A lot of classic SF is fun when you’re a teenager but doesn’t hold up well as an adult. One exception would be Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

>>19999031
> The five spots of paint - the man, the woman, the children, the ball- remained. The rest was a thin
charcoaled layer.

Genre is generally hard to pull off. You have to find a balance between serious/self-aware tone, informing the reader about the world without infodumping, building a world without focusing too much on technical stuff and still writing a good story. Like other people said it's usually concept > prose but genre usually operates on the basis of somehow catering to reader's expectations and sticking to genre guidelines so there tends not to be a lot of unique, interesting sci fi concepts out there.

>>19994538
very many genre authors are well-versed in "good" literature, this isn't what makes the difference. even people you probably consider bottom-of-the-barrel like stephen king and brandon sanderson. look it up if you don't believe me
>>19994912
>>19996622
what the fuck is this lovecraft revisionism? he's been considered a pulpy author throughout my life, people would laugh at you if you said his prose was good, are you guys zoomers or something?

>>19994621
>>19999017
formalism is a farce

>>19996399
>Wolfe and Tolkien
are fucking terrible you knuckledragging theist larper.

>>19996399
>PKD (who was leagues ahead of the 'big three')
drugged up schizo posts in book form are not better than heinlein or asimov. hes better than clarke though based on his short stories alone though